Initiating a cross-sector interorganizational collaboration: lessons from a failed attempt at following appreciative inquiry practice

ABSTRACT

Appreciative Inquiry is a theory of intentional collective action which provides a model of communication processes for recognizing existing organizational strengths, as opposed to problems, as the basis for action plans. This paper reports on a case where Appreciative Inquiry was improperly applied to an all-day workshop that was aimed at initiating a new interorganizational collaboration (IOC) among 18 different agencies from public transportation and health sectors. We analyze why and how the workshop participants could not envision their potential IOC. The analysis reveals several issues related to the design elements of the workshop, caused in part by the facilitator’s overreliance on Appreciative Inquiry’s 4D model and lack of consideration of the communicative needs in the specific context (i.e. pre-IOC interactions among unfamiliar organizational representatives that have not worked together previously). The paper concludes with suggestions for applying Appreciative Inquiry in IOCs.

KEYWORDS:

• Appreciative inquiry
• interorganizational collaboration
• cross-sector collaboration
• organizational communication

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the valuable feedback from the editor and anonymous reviewers. The first author wishes to thank the study informants for their generosity and candid insights they shared with her during data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The data set for this study is derived from a larger research project supported by the National Science Foundation: [Grant Number SES-1057148].